All quiet on the airport front? Noise curfews can play havoc with travel plans

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Imagine you were aboard easyJet’s Sunday evening flight from London Gatwick to Basel. The plane departed over two hours late. The airline blamed air-traffic control restrictions throughout the day; earlier, Ryanair said 15 per cent of its first-wave departures that morning left late because of shortages of air-traffic controllers across Europe.

Yet the plane made good progress. Fifty minutes into the flight all seemed to be going well. The Airbus A320 had descended from its cruise altitude of 29,000 to 15,000 feet. Touchdown was 10 minutes away, at about 11.15pm local time. Suddenly, though, the aircraft made a sharp right turn and flew an extra 200 miles to Lyon in southern France.

Passengers were told the flight had been delayed “outside of the opening hours of Basel airport”. The airline explained: “Some airports have strict operating times which cannot be extended. As a result we had no option but to divert your flight.”

They completed the journey through the night on buses, taking a further four hours. Passengers waiting at Basel to fly to London on the same plane were told their flight was cancelled. The aircraft flew empty from Lyon back to Gatwick.

Yet several other easyJet aircraft landed at Basel after that time without an issue. What had actually happened was that someone at easyJet HQ had calculated that while the Airbus A320 could land without a problem, it would not be allowed to take off again that night because of the 11pm noise curfew on departures. So very late on in the journey, easyJet chose to divert the plane.

Noise curfews are designed to protect people on the ground from overnight disturbance. Many residents will say they don’t go far enough. London Heathrow is the prime example. The usual approach to Europe’s busiest airport is over west and southwest London, with millions of people affected by aircraft noise. The last touchdown on Monday evening was at 11pm (British Airways from Rome). On Tuesday morning, Virgin Atlantic landed from Johannesburg at 4.40am.

Heathrow airport says: “We appreciate that noise created at night can cause greater disturbance to people. It is generally quieter at night and the majority of people are trying to sleep. Also, night noise may seem worse in the summer when people are more likely to sleep with windows open.”

Nevertheless, 16 flights are allowed to land each day between 4.30am and 6am (after that, the number of landings sharply increases). Departures are scheduled from 6am to 11pm; on Monday night, the last plane out – a DHL cargo jet to Leipzig – took off at 11pm exactly. First off the ground on Tuesday was Swiss to Zurich at 6.09am.

Hacan, the Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise, is calling for “a complete eight-hour ban between 11pm and 7am”. This correlates with the legal definition of “night hours” under the 1996 Noise Act.

The closest I can find to this goal is at Sydney airport, which under the Curfew Act outlaws take-offs and landings between 11pm and 6am. Airlines are encouraged not to push their luck on pain of an AUS $110,000 (£56,500) fine. Yet even Sydney has some flex, with up to five landings permitted between 5am and 6am each day.

Kathmandu airport, meanwhile, will impose a 10pm-8am curfew during the coming winter. But that has nothing to do with noise: they want to extend the runway of Nepal’s main airport.

The most extreme noise limitations are at London City airport in the Docklands area of the capital. The airport operates only 6.30am to 10pm from Monday to Friday, with an extra half-hour permitted at the end of the day “for flights which were scheduled earlier but unavoidably delayed”. At weekends the airport closes completely from 1pm on Saturday to 12.30pm on Sunday.

London City wanted to extend Saturday afternoon operations to 6.30pm, on the grounds that everyone is out and about, and it is a time when east London is never short of noise from other sources. But ministers have just turned the bid down – saying, opaquely: “While it is not clear that the amendments would result in a significant noise effect, it is also not clear that they would not.”

Much sleep was lost by the passengers on easyJet 8483 during their long and winding journey being driven through the night from Lyon to their intended destination of Basel.

The airline insists “we had no option but to divert your flight”. Yet since it is clear the airline could have decided to land at Basel, put the crew in a hotel overnight and fly back the following day, complete with the delayed London-bound travellers, the decision was easyJet’s alone. Perhaps one or two of the passengers will make some noise about compensation.

For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast